The White House released a complete transcript of President Trump’s July phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, just as Trump vowed to do on Tuesday.
The conversation started off with President Trump congratulating Zelensky on winning his election and the Ukrainian president responded by thanking Trump for how much he learned from him, including his tactics.
“We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you,” Zelensky said, according to the released document. “We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections."
Trump proceeded to talk with Zelensky about how the United States is a strong supporter of Ukraine, adding that the European Union is not backing up their good talk of the country with action, to which Zelensky agreed. Trump then brought up former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
“There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump said. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.”
As Fox News reports:
“That refers to Joe Biden, while vice president, urging Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, while Shokin was investigating the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings — where Hunter Biden was on the board. Biden has maintained that corruption concerns prompted his intervention.”
“I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor,” Zelensky responded to Trump. “First of all I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament; the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September.”
“The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case,” he added.
Democrats accused the president of freezing $400 million dollars in aid to Ukraine, but the transcript shows no mention of this. Trump clapped back at the claims in a tweet Wednesday referencing the newly released transcript.
“Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President?” Trump asked. “They should, a perfect call - got them by surprise!”
Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President? They should, a perfect call - got them by surprise!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2019
You can read the entire transcript of the phone call HERE.